Claim Your Google Side Wiki

Google Sidewiki is a new Google Toolbar Feature that helps you build communities around your web site with one click.

With the increase in social media, blogs, bulletin boards, forums, and consumer generated content/review web sites and ratings, this new plug-in is sure to be a good tool to have in your marketing tool kit.

Google's new feature:

Sidewiki enables users who have installed Google Toolbar to contribute information alongside any page on the web, inside of a simple sidebar UI. This information, which can include text entries, links, and embedded videos, will be ranked by quality and community ratings. For instance, on a site about a specific beach town, a user could add a relevant YouTube video showing local attractions. Once users opt in to the feature, they'll be able to view annotations contributed by other users within a browser sidebar, and can choose to hide the sidebar at any time. Google Sidewiki also will not change the appearance of any webpage " all Sidewiki entries will be displayed only in
the sidebar.
The feature requires users have the latest version of Google Toolbar installed. Google has a growing penetration, and deals with major manufacturers to install the toolbar by default!

Below is a snapshot of how the Google Wiki will look in your browser bar.



Users will be able to leave comments about your web site and other web sites which appear as a little side-bar next to your actual site. The side does not appear until a user clicks the tab.

The comments can be voted up or down by other participants. They can apply to the whole page or part of a page, and they can be shared to other users even if they do not have the search-wiki installed.

Participants with more powerful Google Profiles or Personal Page Rank will have more influence in the comments. Also, Google will analyze language so that ridiculous comments are automatically discounted or removed. (The Google text police are out in force.)

The web site owner can add a comment that is sticky and will stay in the top of the comments. If you are a web site owner or webmaster, this is a very good reason to load Google Wiki right away and make your first post!

Below is a snapshot of the Hampton Roads Online web site after clicking on my Google Wiki tab.

Take note of the link text in a snapshot above for 'My blogs on Blogger'.

This is an extremely cool feature!

If you have a 'free' blog account on Blogger, your Google Wiki posts are posted to your blog automatically! This is a great time saver for users who have one or multiple blogs.

For example, I have a marketing blog located at http://gorillamarketing.blogspot.com. Each time I visit a web site and post a comment using Google Wiki it automatically populates my marketing blog! This is a great way to build my blog with fresh content!

Now the big question is, 'Will any of this help work in conjunction with my other search engine marketing efforts?'
Let's wait and see...

About the Author
Ricardo Vidallon is company owner and creative designer for http://www.visionefx.net